“New research demonstrates that habits of so-called magical thinking — the belief, for instance, that wishing harm on a loathed colleague or relative might make him sick — are far more common than people acknowledge. … (M)agical thinking underlies a vast, often unseen universe of small rituals that accompany people through every waking hour of a day.”
Tag: 01.23.07
Soap Opera Scriptwriters, Take Note
“In the movies amnesia is bizarre, and thrilling. The star is usually a former assassin or government agent whose future depends on retrieving the bloody, jigsaw fragments that restore identity and explain the past. Yet in the real world, people with amnesia live in a mental universe at least as strange as fiction: new research suggests that they are marooned in the present, as helpless at imagining future experiences as they are at retrieving old ones.”
Major Labels May Remove Digital Copying Restrictions
“As even digital music revenue growth falters because of rampant file-sharing by consumers, the major record labels are moving closer to releasing music on the Internet with no copying restrictions — a step they once vowed never to take. Executives of several technology companies … said over the weekend that at least one of the four major record companies could move toward the sale of unrestricted digital files in the MP3 format within months.”
‘Higher Power Of Lucky’ Wins Newbery Medal
“The two most prestigious awards for American children’s books went yesterday to Susan Patron, a relatively unknown author who was awarded this year’s Newbery Medal, and to David Wiesner, an illustrator who won the Caldecott Medal for the third time.”
Carving A Myth In Granite
The design for New York City’s $15.5 million Frederick Douglass Circle includes “a huge quilt in granite, an array of squares, a symbol in each, supposedly part of a secret code sewn into family quilts and used along the Underground Railroad to aid slaves. Two plaques would explain this. The only problem: According to many prominent historians, the secret code … never existed.”
BritArt – Everywhere But Home
So the Louvre is collecting English art. “Forgive me for not waving the union flag and tricolour side by side in gratitude and joy, but the French national collection of world art is discovering Britain several years, if not decades, after everyone else”… Still, “our own national collection is more isolated than ever in its refusal to vaunt the genius of British artists in its permanent galleries.”
A Random House Institution
“At a time when publishing has become yet another media spectacle, with advances rising into the stratosphere and key players engaging in public dramas like Judith Regan’s firing from HarperCollins, Robert Loomis has remained rooted in the classic mold of the editor, which is to say, in the background.”